Google’s August Algorithm Update: Did You Also Lose Rankings?

Over the last few weeks or so, there has been a lot of talk about possible Google algorithm updates.

Since the beginning of August Google’s ‘Medic Update’ has created huge waves across the health industry, with many authoritative sites experiencing significant drops in rankings.

Though this has not just affected sites in the health niche, we have also witnessed knock-on effects in categories such as food, fitness, medical, travel, and even finance.

This is unlike many of the other Google algorithm updates we’ve witnessed before, in that there appears to be a lot less rationale behind these vast search engine result movements.

Thanks to our unique trackers we look at here at RankBack, we’ve seen significant ranking shifts across a number of different websites which has given us some great insights into these seismic shifts, therefore allowing us to support our customers with that much more confidence.

We track overall rankings for keywords across a site, and determine whether their average position has improved or worsened in Google.

Especially now in September 2018, we’re receiving many emails from people that have lost Google traffic in recent weeks and months due to significant Google’s algorithm changes, which has negatively affected many top sites.

This is an example of one of the many emails that we have received recently:

Here is another:

In fact, as I type we have received two very similar emails in the last day.

Something to bear in mind if your site has been affected by these updates, is that there are reported to be 500 to 600 Google algorithm updates each and every year.

There’s really no surprise in noticing that “something has changed” and seeing your rankings and traffic be affected by that.

Something we always ask customers to keep in mind when it comes to overall search results, is whether you are really the best result for a user query?

Undoubtedly, there are things you can do to improve your rankings such as on-site SEO, being optimised for answer boxes (rank zero), as well as building links to your site, but it’s also key to consider “What might Google be thinking.”

If your website design needs work, your user experience could be improved, or others provide better value to search users, that could be at the root of the problems you are facing.

Something that people mistakenly think, is that a Google algorithm update may actually be something else, that is negatively impacting a websites rankings.

As an example, one reader very recently reached out to me about a potential negative SEO attack he had received on his well-being blog.

This actually turned out to be a manual penalty for a schema markup that the site owner hadn’t noticed.

If you have a website that has been negatively affected, I’d love to look into that for you, please don’t hesitate to send me an email on alan@rankback.com.

We didn’t pick up a single new subscriber to the site last week. I’ve just checked a lot of the terms I was ranking well for have now disappeared from Google. Just sent you an email so I really hope you can help!